Book Review: If Then by Jill Lepore

If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

By Jill Lepore

Liveright Publishing, 432 pages

The guys who invented predictive analytics never saw failure coming.

That’s the upshot of Jill Lepore’s latest book, If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future. 

Ostensibly, it’s the story of Simulmatics, founded in 1959 on the idea that with enough data collected in one place, everything and everyone would become predictable. The name is an attempted portmanteau combining the words “simulation” and “automatic.” You’ve probably never heard of Simulmatics because it folded in 1970, but during its short history it played a role in electing John F. Kennedy, mismanaging the Vietnam War, seeking answers to 1960s social upheaval, and speeding the presence of mainframe computers at advertising agencies.

If Then: Book Summary

The founder of Simulmatics was Ed Greenfield, a midcentury ad man, but not like Don Draper. Lepore delightfully introduces him: “He was like a ten-million-volt Looney Tunes electric magnet, a giant red-handled iron U that pulled everyone toward him.” His personality, his ability to influence others, was what propelled him. As evidence, the story includes a lot of bold-faced names, especially from Democratic Party politics, which is what Greenfield cared about most.

Indeed, he built an impressive team. Lepore introduces the other main players early, and efficiently. Harold Laswell, the influential communications theorist. Eugene Burdick, novelist and self-styled adventurer. Alex Bernstein, mathematician and computer programming pioneer. Ithiel de Sola Pool, a social scientist specializing in technology. Bill McPhee, a FORTRAN programmer – and this is such an emblematic aspect of the story – who wrote “the core intellectual property” of Simulmatics while he was committed to Bellevue. Yes, a mental hospital.

Punchcards
on parade

Like any startup, the group had big plans. They bragged they had invented “the A-bomb of the social sciences.” They called it a “People Machine” that could predict the outcomes of advertising campaigns and government policy initiatives. Sadly, they couldn’t get out of their own way. They overplayed their true role in JFK’s winning presidential campaign of 1960. They overpromised how they could help the New York Times analyze the 1962 midterm elections in real time. They overestimated, tragically, how Western-style social science techniques could understand Vietnamese culture. They oversold their value to blue chip brands but opened the door to a legion of market research providers still selling soap today.

One gap in the story: What projects did they actually finish? The only projects fully described were the political ones, and there was only fleeting mention of having sold studies to various corporations, like Bristol Laboratories, Philip Morris, P&G, and some others. Simulmatics was always starved for data, so most of the projects had little effect. Still, it would have been interesting to read more about those episodes.

Eventually Simulmatics folded, although some of its work survived in projects undertaken by individual team members, thus laying the groundwork for today’s data-driven marketing. They accomplished just enough to push things forward, but not enough to get pinned with credit or blame for what we have now. Oddly, Simulmatics’ most accurate predictions came not from data but from the very human insights of Ithiel de Sola Pool. He envisioned with eerie accuracy the role of technology in our lives today: the interconnectedness of the World Wide Web, the ubiquity of social media, and the rise of “mobile computers,” today’s smartphones.

Why Simulmatics matters now

Lepore’s book is thoroughly researched and well-written. It’s a solid history, which is why Simulmatics matters: because we learn from history. Here’s what I took away:

• No data. It shouldn’t have been surprising, but was nevertheless shocking, how Simulmatics never seemed to have data that were complete or accurate. In an almost poignant moment, Lepore writes, “Pool raised the question that Simulmatics would never really answer: ‘What is the data we would need for this model?’” Ad agencies, which had data, filled the gap, bringing in their own IBM mainframes and offering the services to clients directly. Today we have plenty of data, but we still have to answer the question: Which data do we need to solve this problem?

• No humility. The Vietnam phase of the book is a troubling read. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in 1962: “Every quantitative measurement we have shows we are winning the war.” That might have been all too true; Lepore points out that military progress was measured by “the number of insurgents killed,” with the implication that indiscriminate killing ran up the numbers. Humility is a function of introspection. Are we thinking things through? Are we seeing the big picture? Are tracking the right metrics? These questions are relevant to the work we do today.

• No humanity. Lepore points out that computers can simulate a flight because physical laws like F=ma are constant. “But the computer simulation of human behavior … is much more difficult. Behavior is not a law.” If, as some Artificial Intelligence experts say, the brain is just a very sophisticated machine, then eventually we will create a machine that can think like a human brain. But there is a (so far) unquantified human element that no series of If-Then scenarios in FORTRAN, C++ or Python could ever predict.

Simulmatics failed where other succeeded. There’s still lots of room for modern failure, which is why these lessons from the past are important.

Two rules of effective advertising

What makes effective advertising?

There are classic volumes and numerous listicles that purport to answer this question.  There are numerous research methods to pre-test advertising or measure it in-market.

Data only help us make well-informed decisions; data can't write copy for us.  Despite the advent of language-generating programs like GPT-3, data won't drive creativity, although it can (and perhaps should) help us formulate strategies.

How do I know if advertising is effective?

These are not rules for how to write effective advertising.  Every copywriter has rules and methods that work for them, as it should be.  Very few will consult a 12-point article when sitting down to create an advertisement and a 2-rule blog post would be no less presumptuous.  These are rules for the rest of us to keep in mind when writing a creative strategy or evaluating creative work.

Rule 1:  Impossible to tell someone about it without mentioning the product.

You know advertising is memorable when someone is willing and able to describe it.  The retelling will only be as accurate and complete as the ad's story was compelling.  But the retelling doesn't matter if the product isn't part of the story.

Two ads that make the product part of the story are Amazon's tale of two friends, a priest and an imam, who order the same gift for one another, both using Amazon's mobile app, and Metamucil's "The Regulars," in which three co-workers visit the restroom at the same time daily, due to the, uh, product benefit.  (This latter example also shows you what a product demo can be, as well as offering a pack shot that goes with the story.)

Rule 2:  Impossible to forget what brand created it.

You know advertising is persuasive when the recipient remembers the brand as well as the product. Common ways to improve the odds of success are a brand name linked to the product benefit (Chapstick, although they've let people use the name generically), a brand associated over the long-term with a clear positioning or benefit (Nike, athletic performance) or campaign elements consistent enough over time that they're easily recognizable (IBM, still using the blue letterbox treatment for almost 20 years).

Rule #2.

The two ads cited above follow this rule, too, mainly because the brand and product are so closely linked.

Be careful, however, because the degree of difficulty goes up if you're launching a new product that would take your brand into an adjacent category or even segment.

DO try this at home

Be a consumer.  Try this as you encounter advertising during the day, even/especially banner ads, billboards, any form of ad.  See if it's impossible for you to tell someone about the ad without mentioning the product, or impossible to forget what brand created it.

If you try this experiment at work -- well, be careful.  Look closely at messaging strategy and product portfolio.  Almost every time, advertising that breaks these rules came from business strategy that failed to consider them in the first place.

What is Ad Majorem?

Thank you for visiting my blog, Ad Majorem.  When it started in the late 2000s, it was a view on modern marketing from within a large advertising agency.  Now it’s a view on modern marketing from the perspective of a CMO.

The title, Ad Majorem, is part of a familiar Latin phrase and loosely translates to English as “to the greater.”  As in, there is always an opportunity for better marketing: stronger consumer insights, more powerful ideas, channel-neutral marketing plans, and accountability so we know what sells and what doesn’t.

 

There’s also always an opportunity for better marketing people.  It’s important to me that team members keep learning as they go, staying curious and maintaining a perspective of continuous improvement.  We’re happier when we’re learning and growing, so that will continue to be a theme here.

The “ad” in Ad Majorem means all marketing communications, from social media to direct mail to Internet gaming to television commercials. To most consumer audiences all of these are advertising. My professional experience

in these channels provides a perspective that is part specialist, part generalist.

A lot has changed since 2009, not all of it “to the greater.”  We’re at a very inauspicious moment, with uncertainty, threats, deepfakes and divisions.  This blog has always avoided politics, and will continue to avoid politics, because there are too many wannabe pundits in marketing and advertising already.

That said, there’s always hope for the future, so the tone here will be hopeful as well as honest.  Don’t come here for dirt, fear or loathing. The closest I’ll come to that is self-criticism of the marketing business. Occasionally I’ll stray into a review of a campaign but only in service of a larger point.

Please comment. Otherwise this wouldn’t be an honest look at an industry where communication with consumers should be two-way, not just one-way.

One thing hasn’t changed since I started this blog.  Ad Majorem’s reason for being is to keep myself honest on embracing the challenges and changes of modern marketing. My hope is that you, too, will derive some professional growth from it.